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How does the value of life affect annuity demand? To address this question, we construct a portfolio choice problem with three key features: i) agents have access to life-contingent assets, ii) they always prefer living to dying, iii) agents have non-expected utility preferences. We show that as utility from being alive increases, annuity demand decreases (increases) if agents are more (less) averse to risk rather than to intertemporal fluctuations. Put differently, if people prefer early resolution of uncertainty, they are less interested in annuities when the value of life is high. Our findings have two important implications. First, we get better understanding of the well-known annuity puzzle. Second, we argue that the observed low annuity demand provides evidence that people prefer early rather than late resolution of uncertainty.

We operationalise the theoretical modelling of Marin-Solano and Jorge Navas (2010), seeking to understand the consequences for optimal consumption, life insurance and annuity demand in a time inconsistent world, by incorporating the insurance insights from Richard (1975). Richar, in particular, has an elegant treatment of optimal annuity demand, rarely harnessed in the literature. Central to Richard’s creation of demand for personal insurance is a bequest motive and, in addition to implementing time inconsistency through hyperbolic discounting, our analysis is further expanded to include naive and sophisticated agents with a luxury bequest motive (Lockwood, 2012). Compared to a more simplistic ‘necessity’ bequest framework, luxury bequests (broadly) weaken optimal life insurance demand and strengthen optimal life annuity demand for the less wealthy. In contrast, time inconsistency offers a wide spectrum of outcomes, and our modelling, calibrated to Swiss data, contributes to understanding the annuity puzzle—observed low levels of (voluntary) purchases of life annuities.

We study the robustness of the results of Milevsky and Huang (2018) on the optimal demand for annuities to the choice of the utility function. To do so, we first propose a new way to span the set of all increasing concave utility functions by exploiting a one-to-one correspondence with the set of probability distribution functions. For example, this approach makes it possible to present a five-parameter family of concave utility functions that encompasses a number of standard concave utility functions, e.g., CRRA, CARA and HARA. Second, we develop a novel numerical method to handle the life-cycle model of Yaari (1965) and the annuity equivalent wealth problem for a general utility function. We show that the results of Milevsky and Huang (2018) on the optimal demand for annuities proved in the case of a CRRA and logarithmic utility maximizer hold more generally.

We establish a continuous-time model to solve the optimal consumption-saving problem with life annuity. The decision-maker has ambiguous beliefs in the force of mortality and is averse to this model uncertainty. The ambiguity aversion is represented by the max-min principle under the framework of robust control. We show that the optimal annuity demand decreases with the extent of ambiguity aversion, bequest motives, and extent of relative risk aversion. For an individual with non-zero bequest motives, the optimal annuity demand becomes zero when the extent of ambiguity aversion exceeds a certain threshold. We also show that, even if the individual has access to actuarially fair annuities, the optimal consumption would have a hump-shaped path when the individual is ambiguity-averse.

A seminal result Yaari holds that all pension savings should be in life-annuities. Annuities offer a higher return than standard assets and diversify mortality risk and therefore it is individually optimal to save in annuities only. This is a cornerstone result in the pensions literature where many attempts have been made to explain that individual savings in annuities is very low, the socalled annuity puzzle. But is the result that all pension savings should be in life-annuities also socially optimal? We show in a standard setting with fair annuities and dynamic efficiency that full annutization of all pensions saving is not socially optimal. Less than full annutization implies unintentional bequests and thus transfers from the old to the young, which is welfare improving under dynamic efficiency. Further, we show that no annutization can implement the Golden Rule capital stock level and analyse whether some annutization is socially optimal using a numerical analysis, which shows that it is the case under a wide range of parameter constellations.

Purpose Deferred annuities, which offer longevity insurance with relatively low premiums, are a potential payout option in defined contribution (DC) pension plans in Japan. This study aims to measure individual preferences for these annuities. Design/methodology/approach This study conducts stated choice experiments using an original internet survey. This methodology provides a decision-making scenario similar to that faced by individuals when making real retirement saving decisions. Subjective valuations of deferred, immediate and term annuities are compared. Findings This study finds that male individuals have an insignificant preference for deferred annuities – the benefits of which begin at an advanced age. On average, deferred annuities are considered a gamble, betting against life and individuals who are married and have higher financial assets tend to value them less. Originality/value While previous studies, based on theory and simulations, have found that deferred annuities should be included in individual retirement assets, this study examines annuity preferences from the demand side (i.e. DC plan participants) –an approach that has not been addressed in the literature.

This paper proposes an innovative retirement product with a focus on longevity risk sharing, a contract we refer to as tail index-linked annuity (TILA). Specifically, the proposed TILA pays out variable annual payments, which will be equal to a regular nominal amount when a reference survival index is lower than a predetermined threshold (i.e., normal evolution of longevity risk), and a reduced, index-dependent payment when the threshold is passed (i.e., highly unfavorable evolution of longevity risk). The proposed TILA aims at not only improving the benefits of the policyholders, which has been the focus in recent literature on innovative retirement products, but also reducing the longevity risk exposure of the insurer, particularly for advanced retirement ages. Using real-world mortality data and stochastic multi-population mortality model, we find that the proposed TILA leads to higher expected lifetime utility than regular annuities for policyholders with different degrees of risk aversions. Meanwhile, numerical analysis shows that the proposed TILA could greatly mitigate the solvency risk of the insurer, leading to substantially lower loss probability and expected (tail-) loss than regular annuities in the presence of longevity shock, and therefore could reduce the insurer's required solvency capital under latest solvency regulations.

We empirically examine the effect of local religious beliefs on the risk-taking behaviour of U.S. life insurers headquartered in that region. We distinguish between insurers that predominantly write annuities and insurers that predominantly write life insurance policies; the annuity business is relatively riskier than writing life insurance. Insurers headquartered in high-Catholic or low-Protestant areas are more likely to be annuity writers. Annuity writers located in high-Catholic or low-Protestant areas invest more in risky assets and exhibit higher investment return volatilities, as well as a higher volatility of their return on assets. Overall, our results suggest that local culture has significant influences on life insurers’ behaviour. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41288-021-00211-z.

In the present paper, we propose death benefits be directly embedded in retirement products to promote their attractiveness, where annuities and tontines are used as representative retirement products. As we assume that the death benefits will be passed on to the heirs of policyholders, these benefits can be considered as bequests. We find that both from the policyholders’ and insurers’ perspective, embedding bequests directly in the retirement products can increase the attractiveness of the retirement products and promote their sale. From the insurers’ perspective, without including death benefits, the insurers play purely an administrative role in a tontine product, while adding the bequest benefits makes the tontines real insurance products and incentivizes the insurers to actively provide these innovative retirement products. Further, adding the bequest benefits upon the death of the policyholder, some natural hedging is incorporated in the survival payments, which reduces the solvency capital the insurers are required to set aside.

In actuarial science related to pension systems, it is widely assumed that the rate at which the reserves cover the payment of annuities (calculated for a given number of lives) is equal to the expected rate of return of the portfolios in which such reserves are invested. Given this assumption, pension fund managers may take greater risks to realize higher returns and subsequently reduce their pension liabilities. This study demonstrates that the discount rate used to calculate a two-life annuity and the expected return on the portfolio are not necessarily equal. A stochastic-based model is used to determine the proper discount rate for calculating the two-life annuity. The model includes fluctuations of both the interest rate and the payments made by the annuity. In general, this study contributes to the stability of pension systems by determining the appropriate discount rate when computing required actuarial reserves or the portfolio’s required rate of return given a reserve.

Dynamic hybrid products emerged in 2007 and are now well established in the German life insurance market. In this article, we study interaction effects between dynamic hybrid products and traditional deferred annuity contracts, that are sold by the same insurance company. The key question we investigate is whether the presence of dynamic hybrid products has a negative effect on the payout of traditional insurance products. We do so by using data drawn from a Monte Carlo simulation that is based on a model presented in this article. These data reveal that dynamic hybrid products reduce the payment to policyholders of traditional deferred annuities via the channel of surplus participation.

We investigate retirement decisions of the self-employed in the Netherlands using administrative data focusing on individuals around 65, the state pension age, after which each Dutch resident receives the Old Age State Pension annuity. Since the eligibility age and the magnitude of this state pension are known well in advance, we expect to find no impact on labor supply choices, unless individuals face liquidity constraints. We investigate whether this is the case, by looking at retirement and changes in earnings of the self-employed around age 65. We find a peak in retirement when self-employed reach the state pension age, which is unlikely to be due to liquidity constraints but might be explained by behavioral features.

Sustainable forest management requires tools to guide optimal silvicultural treatments. Timing and intensity of thinnings and timing of final harvest are key decisions. An Optimized Reforestation M...

The demand for voluntary individual lifetime annuities is low, as merely 10% of soon-to-be retired Canadians care to buy such contracts. To assess the reasons why, we design a stated-preference experiment in which we vary characteristics of annuity contracts to estimate individuals’ sensitivity to an annuity’s money’s worth (that is, the value-to-cost ratio). Using different measures of longevity risk and survival expectations, we investigate how knowledge of annuity products and mortality risk misperceptions affect the take-up and the sensitivity of the demand for annuities. We find that annuities are objectively actuarially neutral in general (meaning that annuity premiums are equal to their expected payment), and can appear to offer great value for the money given an individual’s subjective mortality risk. We also find that demand is somewhat price-inelastic so that lowering the price of annuities could increase demand by at most 2 percentage points for a base of 10%. Lack of knowledge of annuities explains another 0.8 percentage points. We find limited additional interest for deferred annuities compared to immediate annuities, although respondents are less sensitive to deferred annuity prices.

Murabahah merupakan pembiayaan yang mendominasi portofolio perbankan syariah di Indonesia sampai dengan posisi September 2018. Akan tetapi, total jumlah pembiayaan murabahah masih sangat kecil jika dibandingkan dengan penyaluran kredit perbankan konvensional. Salah satu isu yang harus dicarikan solusi supaya bisa mengakselerasi pertumbuhan bisnis bank syariah adalah isu kesesuaian murabahah dengan ketentuan syariah, yaitu dalam aspek penambahan margin dalam murabahah serta penggunaan metode anuitas dan flat dalam menghitung margin. Oleh karena itu, kegiatan bank syariah dalam melakukan pembiayaan murabahah perlu dilihat sebagai kegiatan pengelolaan harta ( wealth creation/accumulation ) bank syariah selaku subjek ekonomi. Pendekatan konsep pengelolaan harta ini bisa merujuk pada surat Al-kahfi ayat 46, dimana harta harus dikelola dengan cara-cara yang sesuai dengan syariah supaya bernilai sebagai al-baaqiyat as-sholihat (amal sholeh). Denga konsep al-baaqiyat as-sholihat ini maka penambahan margin dan penggunaan metode anuitas dan flat dapat menjadi sesuai dengan kaidah syariah sehingga kegiatan pembiayaan murabahah menjadi bernilai amal sholeh. Hal ini bertujuan untuk mengakselerasi pertumbuhan murabahah serta pertumbuhan bank syariah itu sendiri sehingga semakin banyak masyarakat yang bisa mengakses perbankan syariah.

This article demonstrates that a secondary market for U.S. variable annuity policies may be immediately welfare enhancing to all parties involved: the insurer, the original policyholder, and a thir...

Even though delaying Social Security is equivalent to purchasing a very favorably priced annuity, almost everyone takes Social Security at or before their full retirement age. Many who take Social Security early simultaneously report additional annuity income. This combination can create an arbitrage opportunity where an individual could explicitly or implicitly sell their relatively high priced annuity, use the proceeds to delay Social Security and secure higher income for life. Several hundred thousand, perhaps millions, of households fail to take advantage of this arbitrage opportunity, with a resulting loss that ranges up to $250,000.

To evaluate a large portfolio of variable annuity (VA) contracts, many insurance companies rely on Monte Carlo simulation, which is computationally intensive. To address this computational challenge, machine learning techniques have been adopted in recent years to estimate the fair market values (FMVs) of a large number of contracts. It is shown that bootstrapped aggregation (bagging), one of the most popular machine learning algorithms, performs well in valuing VA contracts using related attributes. In this article, we highlight the presence of prediction bias of bagging and use the bias-corrected (BC) bagging approach to reduce the bias and thus improve the predictive performance. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of BC bagging as compared with bagging, boosting, and model points in terms of prediction accuracy.

Modeling taxation of Variable Annuities has been frequently neglected, but accounting for it can significantly improve the explanation of the withdrawal dynamics and lead to a better modeling of the financial cost of these insurance products. The importance of including a model for taxation has first been observed by Moenig and Bauer (2016) while considering a Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB) Variable Annuity. In particular, they consider the simple Black–Scholes dynamics to describe the underlying security. Nevertheless, GMWB are long-term products, and thus accounting for stochastic interest rate has relevant effects on both the financial evaluation and the policyholder behavior, as observed by Goudenège et al. (2018). In this paper, we investigate the outcomes of these two elements together on GMWB evaluation. To this aim, we develop a numerical framework which allows one to efficiently compute the fair value of a policy. Numerical results show that accounting for both taxation and stochastic interest rate has a determinant impact on the withdrawal strategy and on the cost of GMWB contracts. In addition, it can explain why these products are so popular with people looking for a protected form of investment for retirement.

The Chilean insurance industry has experienced significant growth in recent years through annuity sales, requiring life insurance companies to actively manage longevity and reinvestment risks. As a result, the regulator opened up investment options in international instruments in order to diversify portfolios and increase the expected internal rate of return on annuity policies. We analyse both the determinants of Chilean life insurance companies’ investment abroad and what effect investment abroad has on the internal interest rates paid on annuities. We fit regression models by OLS fixed effects and GMM to information on 15 life insurance companies for the period of March 2008–September 2019. Investments abroad persist over time and managers are seen to actively allocate these. Furthermore, companies with greater investments abroad are more likely to increase annuity payouts in the range of 2.2% to 4.2%. Finally, we find that a more competitive insurance market could increase pension payouts from 3.1% to 3.7%. Policymakers may use these results to continue diversifying portfolios and to manage the structure of the life insurance market to further increase annuitants’ welfare.

This article explores the costs and benefits associated with different approaches a financial advisor could take toward using (or not using) annuities across his or her entire book of clients (i.e., for an entire cohort of retirees). Fees are used to proxy the implied total expenses (or costs) for the two approaches, and not surprisingly, the relative fees between the portfolio and the annuity has a significant impact on the respective benefit of each. For example, a financial advisor would be better off not recommending annuities at all (on average), if the investment-only approach is considered to be low cost and the annuity approach is assumed to be high cost. If the fees for both approaches are assumed to be moderate (i.e., the implied total expenses of the strategies are equal), which is the most realistic scenario for financial advisors providing high-quality advice to clients, the average annuity allocation across scenarios is approximately 30% and helping retirees allocate to annuities optimally generates a total of 73 basis points of alpha-equivalent benefit compared with a financial advisor that does not consider annuities as part of the retirement plan. The marginal alpha-equivalent benefit associated with optimal annuitization strategies, which is estimated by focusing on the total additional benefit generated from allocating to annuities based on the percentage of assets actually used to purchase the annuity, is closer to 150 basis points—a level of increased risk-adjusted performance that would be almost impossible for a financial advisor to overcome using traditional investments (i.e., ignoring annuities). TOPICS:Wealth management, retirement Key Findings • Annuities can help retirees generate guaranteed income for life, something that is impossible for investment-only product. • The potential value of annuities, relative to investment-focused approaches, depends significantly on the assumed costs of the respective strategies. • Not considering annuities for retirees because some annuities are expensive can result in inefficient and imprudent retirement plans.

Annuities are being treated as a backup financial strategy throughout the age of retirement and a way of reducing the long-term risk of a person’s old age. Takaful markets in Malaysia have wanted to advance an annuity plan backed by Islamic Shari’ah and similar to the purpose pursued by an insurance company, but failed to do so after initiation in early 1999. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship among consumers’ decision to take Takaful retirement annuity plan and their perceived value, knowledge mediated by attitude. Quantitative research has been conducted by a structured questionnaire survey on participants’ attitude, perceived value and knowledge of Takaful retirement annuity plan. The sample (n=121) for this study consisted of the employees working in different functional units of the International Islamic University Malaysia located in the metropolitan capital (Kuala Lumpur and Selangor) area of Malaysia. The findings from this study unveiled that the attitude and perceived value of the participants had a significant positive relationship with their decisions to take Takaful retirement annuity plan. But no direct connection has been found between knowledge and choices on Takaful retirement annuity plan. The significant practical implication of this study will be the Takaful operators, their customers, and researchers.

TIAA’s Traditional annuity has supported retirements for a century. It resembles a stable-value fund. The author investigates the holdings supporting it, constructs readily available alternatives resembling those holdings, compares the returns of those alternatives with Traditional, and constructs a new measure of risk to compare Traditional’s risk with that of its alternatives in a more appropriate way than by using short-term standard deviation of returns. Under this new measure of risk, which is appropriate for retirement investors, some alternatives exhibited second-degree stochastic dominance over Traditional using 1987–2015 data. However, Traditional may still be a better choice for unsophisticated investors. TOPICS:Retirement, portfolio construction, legal/regulatory/public policy Key Findings • TIAA has reported Traditional Annuity’s returns in nonstandard, sometimes incorrect ways. Its short-term volatility is irrelevant because withdrawals require 9 years. • The duration and quality of TIAA’s General Account can be matched by mutual funds for which feasible historical payouts over 9 years can be inferred. • Over 1987–2015, Traditional’s 9-year payouts were second-degree stochastically dominated, reversing results using shorter-term volatility measures.

This paper explicitly derives the optimal dynamic consumption and portfolio choice of an individual with prospect theory preferences. The individual is loss averse, endogenously updates his reference level over time, and distorts probabilities. We show that the optimal consumption strategy is rather insensitive to economic shocks. In particular, in case the individual sufficiently overweights unlikely unfavorable events, our model generates an endogenous floor on consumption. As a result, an individual with prospect theory preferences typically implements a (very) conservative portfolio strategy. We discuss implications of our results for the design of investment-linked annuity products.

Nearly all life-cycle models adopt Yaari’s (1965) assumption that individuals know the survival probabilities that they face. Given that an individual’s exact survival probabilities are likely unknown, we explore the implications of relaxing this assumption. If there is no annuity market, then the welfare cost of survival ambiguity is large and regressive. Ambiguity neutral individuals would pay as much as 1% of total lifetime consumption for immediate resolution of ambiguity and the bottom income quintile is 4 times worse off than the top quintile. Alternatively, with the availability of competitive annuity contracts, survival ambiguity is welfare improving because it allows competitive insurance companies to pool risk across survival types. Even though Social Security and annuities share some properties, Social Security does not help to hedge survival ambiguity.

The valuation of large variable annuity portfolios is an important enterprise risk management task but is computationally challenging due to the need for simulation. Existing methods in the literat...

Given the rising cost of maintaining defined benefit (DB) pensions, there has been a surge of activities in recent years by DB plan sponsors to transfer their pension risk through strategies such as buy-ins and buy-outs. As buy-in and buy-out transaction pipelines grow, insurers actively participating in the buy-in and buy-out markets are exposed to significant longevity risk embedded in pension schemes. In this paper, we investigate how to maximize a bulk annuity insurer’s value with reinsurance and/or longevity securities, subject to constraints that control longevity and investment risks as well as an overall risk. We apply duality and the martingale approach to derive an optimal longevity risk transfer strategy. Our results show that longevity risk transfer interacts with an insurer’s investment decision for value maximization. Our analysis also highlights the interdependence of different longevity risk management tools to achieve an overall risk target.

The uncertainty regarding financial returns and the life expectancy, joint to the reduced social security benefits, increasingly expose individuals to the risk of outliving their post-retirement assets. However, the demand for longevity guarantees remains low, due to high costs. The providers, on their side, may be reluctant to offer non-adjustable longevity guarantees, as the risk is long term and difficult to predict. It is therefore convenient to reconsider the design of longevity guarantees. In particular, a participating structure, providing a link to some longevity experience, could allow a sharing of losses, and possibly profits, resulting in a reduction of the cost of the retained guarantee. The literature review suggests a number of alternatives to define a longevity-linking arrangement, but the topic is not yet completely explored. It is useful, in particular, to have a common framework, under which the various solutions can be interpreted and compared, also with a view to the trade-off between the retained risk and the cost of the guarantee. Developing a general structure describing longevity-linked post-retirement benefits is the main purpose of this paper. Allowing for aggregate longevity risk, we then examine suitable solutions for insurance products.

The need to ensure that people have adequate savings for retirement has prompted debate among regulators and academics. Certain countries have implemented or are considering implementing mandatory minimum annuity laws (e.g., Singapore and Israel), whereas others have repealed or are considering repealing such legislation (e.g., the U.K.). We investigate the introduction as well as the repeal of a regulatory change—specifically, a mandatory minimum annuity rule—using a laboratory experiment and two surveys. Our results indicate that imposing a mandatory minimum may create an anchoring effect to the threshold level. Furthermore, our results suggest that the mandatory requirement may have unintended consequences: Such laws may fail to provide an increase in the demand for annuities and may even reduce it for certain individuals. The outcome is sensitive to the relation between the level of the mandatory minimum and anticipated consumption (i.e., future financial need). Moreover, we provide novel evidence about the consequences of a repeal of mandatory minimum annuity laws and suggest that it may not restore the demand for annuities to the pre-law level.

We study the effects of two exogenous modifications in the Swedish pension system application form nudging individuals towards a fixed-term payout. Meanwhile, the set of available options and the default option—life annuity—were unchanged during the period under study. We examine the effects on individuals’ payout decisions and the spillover effects on labour supply and other pensions using a difference-in-difference framework and detailed administrative data on actual payout decisions and a wide range of individual-level outcomes. Each modification increased the demand for the nudged payout by around 30 percentage points. The first modification also induced individuals to work less.

Mortality study is an essential component of actuarial risk management for life insurance policies, annuities, and pension plans. Life expectancy has drastically increased over the last several decades; consequently, longevity risk associated with annuity products and pension systems has emerged as a crucial issue. Among the various aspects of mortality study, a consideration of the cause-of-death mortality can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of mortality/longevity risk. In this case study, the cause-of-mortality data in Korea and the US were analyzed along with a multinomial logistic regression model that was constructed to quantify the impact of mortality reduction in a specific cause on actuarial values. The results of analyses imply that mortality improvement due to a specific cause should be carefully monitored and reflected in mortality/longevity risk management. It was also confirmed that multinomial logistic regression model is a useful tool for analyzing cause-of-death mortality for actuarial applications.

We study the partial differential equation (PDE) approach for efficient and accurate valuation of a variable annuity (VA) contract with a surrender option. Specifically, using the Laplace–Carson Transform (LCT), we derive an analytic pricing formula for a VA contract with a surrender option which is formulated as a PDE with an optimal surrender boundary. To demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of our approach, we show that our pricing formula efficiently provides the exact value of a VA contract. Moreover, we compare the performance of three numerical methods for Laplace inversion to find the most efficient method. Among these methods, we found that the Gaver–Stehfest method is the most efficient pricing for a VA contract with a surrender option.

State‐run pensions advice websites in the UK and the USA recommend considering how long the pension needs to last and offer a life expectancy calculator for this purpose. Theories make conflicting predictions regarding the effect on annuities preference of following this recommendation. We asked a quota sample of over 2000 UK residents to choose between an annuity or cashing out their pension. Whereas a control group made this choice without any prompt, three treatment groups were asked prior to choice how long their retirement would last, or what age they would live to, or what age they would die by. Asking about life expectancy reduced preference for annuities relative to the control condition. This research suggests that the reference to life expectancy on the UK's pension advice website exacerbates underannuitization.

In this paper we employ a lifecycle model that uses utility of consumption and bequest to determine an optimal Deferred Income Annuity (DIA) purchase policy. We lay out a mathematical framework to formalize the optimization process. The method and implementation of the optimization is explained, and the results are then analyzed. We extend our model to control for asset allocation and show how the purchase policy changes when one is allowed to vary asset allocation. Our results indicate that(i) refundable DIAs are less appealing than non-refundable DIAs because of the loss of mortality credits; (ii) the DIA allocation region is larger under the fixed asset allocation strategy due to it becoming a proxy for fixed-income allocation; and (iii) when the investor is allowed to change asset-allocation, DIA allocation becomes less appealing. However, a case for higher DIA allocation can be made for those individuals who perceive their longevity to be higher than the population.

We consider annuity designs in which the benefit amount is allowed to fluctuate (up or down), based on a given mortality/longevity experience. This way, guarantees are relaxed in respect of traditional annuity arrangements. On the other hand, while the annuitant is exposed to the risk of a future reduction of the benefit amount because of higher longevity, he/she can immediately take advantage of a lower premium loading, as well as of a future increase of the benefit amount in the case of higher mortality. Flexibility in the annuity design could be welcomed by individuals, as the conservative features of traditional products partly explain their lack of attractiveness in most markets. To further contribute to the flexibility of the product, we suggest a pricing structure based on periodic fees applied to the policy fund, instead of the usual upfront loading at issue. Periodic fees are more suitable to support a revision of the arrangement after issue, which is currently not allowed in traditional annuity products. We show that periodic fees can be introduced by identifying a discount factor to be used for pricing and reserving. We assume stochastic mortality, and we compare alternative mortality/longevity linking solutions, by assessing the periodic fees and other quantities.

International audience; This paper seeks to explain why annuity purchases are postponed to a later age. We consider an overlapping generations model with uncertain lifetime and two types of annuities. It is shown that, if the economy is dynamically inefficient, individuals demand annuities without delay. However, if it is efficient, annuity purchases are postponed. We also show that these results are robust to several extensions.

In this paper, we propose two financial-longevity risk-sharing methods based on an existing risk-linked annuity. Within a specific framework, we first propose the risk-sharing group self-annuitization (GSA), where different proportions of financial and longevity risks are shared between a group of annuitants and the insurer. Secondly, we propose the complete risk-sharing GSA. We implicitly define a set of annuity products which depend on the risk proportion borne by a group of annuitants. The defined set of annuities goes from the classical annuity to the GSA.

Purpose Discusses the significance of the Illinois Supreme Court ruling in Van Dyke v. White, which clarified that annuities are not securities in the state of Illinois, with a particular focus on the ramifications to insurance, brokerage and investment advisory standards of care as well as causes of action for breaches thereof. Design/methodology/approach Describes the Court’s ruling as it relates to the industry going forward. Does not discuss the specifics of the plaintiff’s case or history. Findings The statutory language of Illinois’ securities laws specifically excludes annuities from the definition of securities. For this reason, the Illinois Department of Insurance has sole authority over regulating annuities, giving the Illinois Department of Securities no authority, except to the extent there is an investment advisor breach pursuant to §12(J) of the Illinois Securities Law of 1953. The industry has yet to react or adjust to the Court’s ruling, so there may be a future wave of reactions. Originality/value Assists the reader in understanding the unique regulatory environment of annuities in Illinois, the relevant standards of care related to annuity advice and transactions, and remedies for grievances after the Illinois Supreme Court ruling in Van Dyke v. White.

Purpose To analyze FINRA’s 2018 disciplinary actions, the issues that resulted in the most significant fines and restitution, and the emerging enforcement trends from 2018 and beyond. Design/methodology/approach Discusses the disciplinary actions in 2018 and prior years; details the top 2018 enforcement issues measured by total fines assessed, including anti-money laundering, suitability, variable annuity, and short selling; and explains current enforcement trends, including higher fines per case, more cases with larger sanctions in the second half of the year, share class issues, and inadequate resources. Findings In 2018, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) ordered fewer fines than in 2017, and the number of cases and amount of restitution were down. Practical implications Firms and their representatives should heed the trends in both the substantial fines per case that FINRA is ordering and the related enforcement issues in the cases FINRA has brought. Originality/value Expert analysis and guidance from experienced securities enforcement lawyers.

Public Private Partnership Model (PPP) by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) renewal was undertaken by introduction of the hybrid annuity model (HAM) wherein government decided to share the risk of financing by contributing 40% towards the project. With the launch of this scheme more than fifty percent projects got green signal in 201617 under the HAM scheme. This work compares these two models by undertaking a questionnaire survey from the key stakeholders involved in such projects and identifies challenges & risk faced and issues pertaining to delays and success of the proposed model. The outcome from the work highlights that funding has been a major challenge faced by PPP projects and thus innovation into the model is necessary. There also seems to be a lack of transparency in the entire process which makes it riskier for the private investor. It is also concluded from the work that financial risk is predominant whether it is a PPP or HAM model and thus a search for a new sustainable model that is sustainable is essential.

In this article, we develop strategies of hedging multiyear mortality (longevity) risk for a life insurer (an annuity provider) through purchasing some mortality-linked securities from a financial ...

Recently, more and more actuarial researchers have paid attention to valuing life insurance products. In this paper, we study the valuation of equity-linked annuity contracts with guaranteed minimum death benefits (GMDB). The discounted density function approach is used to value this class of life insurance products. We develop the density function of the time-until-death variable on the Laguerre basis and value the GMDB contracts with various equity-linked death benefit functions, including basic options and lookback options. Compared to the Laplace inversion transform method in the literature, our method exhibits remarkable accuracy and efficiency. We also implement life table data to fit the density function of the time-until-death variable by Laguerre functions and provide numerical results for some death benefit functions.

Purpose Although it has been proved theoretically that annuities can provide optimal consumption during one’s retirement period, retirees’ reluctance to purchase annuities is a long-standing puzzle. The purpose of this paper is to use behavioral model to analyze the low demand for immediate annuities. Design/methodology/approach The authors employ cumulative prospect theory (CPT), which contains both loss aversion and probability transformations, to analyze the annuity puzzle. Findings The authors show that CPT can explain the unattractiveness of immediate annuities. It also shows that retirees would be willing to buy a long-term deferred annuity at retirement. By considering each component from CPT in turn, the loss aversion is found to be the major reason that stops people from buying an annuity while the survival rate transformation is an important factor affecting the decision of when to receive annuity incomes. Originality/value This paper identifies CPT as one of the reasons for the low demand of immediate annuities. It further suggests that long-term deferred annuities could overcome behavioral obstacles and become popular among retirees.

Individuals preparing for retirement are currently left with an unsatisfactory choice between security with no flexibility with annuity products and flexibility without security with investment products such as balanced funds or target date funds. To get out of this impasse, the authors introduce a range of flexicure retirement goal-based investing strategies that offer both security and flexibility with respect to the objective of generating replacement income in decumulation. Recent advances in financial engineering and digital technologies make it possible to apply goal-based investing principles to a much broader population of investors than the few traditional clients who can afford customized mandates or private banking services, which suggests that these flexicure retirement solutions can be used as part of the solution to the global pension crisis. TOPICS: Long-term/retirement investing, portfolio construction, quantitative methods

We examine the value of guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) options embedded in variable annuities in two different tax regimes. The New Zealand (NZ) system taxes investment income when it is earned, whereas the system in the United States defers taxes on annuity investment income until it is paid out. We examine the effects of these tax differences on the charges collected by the issuer as well as on the value of the contract to the policyholder. We find that the issuer’s charges are typically lower (higher) in the NZ tax regime when the expected fund earnings are low (high) or the fund volatility is high (low). On the other hand, the value to the policyholder is always lower in the NZ tax regime due to the earlier tax payments.We also find that the value of the GLWB in the NZ tax regime is nearly always below the value of an ordinary payout annuity with the same tax rules.

Since it is well-known that it is inevitable to avoid the risks and changes in personal earnings, the types of annuities, life annuities, life insurance and their payment types are important for individuals, customers and financial institutions. In this study the types of annuities, life annuities and life insurance are discussed and some original payment models have been proposed considering both the annuity-due and annuity-immediate situations in increasing and decreasing case of payments. These suggested payment models that have been proposed have brought innovation to the literature in terms of being original. © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

I find that life insurers with bank affiliates had higher premium growth rates than did other life insurers in 2008. The higher growth is derived mainly from annuity products (deposit‐type insurance products), which are often viewed as substitutes for bank certificates of deposit (CDs). The growth effect is consistent with cross‐selling between affiliated banks and affiliated life insurers. The spread between the guaranteed rates on annuity products and CDs in financial conglomerates widened in 2008, consistent with headquarters differentiating prices to move customers within the same group. In addition, the premium growth effect in 2008 is stronger for life insurers that suffered larger balance sheet shocks, as measured by the change in the risk‐based capital (RBC) ratio. The results support that headquarters used internal markets to reallocate resources to weaker divisions.